of Guildford.  After that we return once more to London, there to await the return of my father and brother.  Alexander, in truth, has once visited us, but has returned to the siege of Calais, hoping to be amongst those who will reap plenteous spoil when the city is given over to plunder, as Caen was given.  Of the Sanghursts, I thank my kindly saints, I have heard naught all this while.  My mother loved them not, albeit she was always entreating me in nowise to thwart or gainsay my father.  I cannot but hope that these long months of absence will have gone far to break the spell that those evil men seemed to cast about him.  Be that as it may, I myself have grown from a child to a woman, and I say now, as I said then, that no power in the world shall induce me to give my hand in marriage to Peter Sanghurst.  I will die first!”

The girl threw back her handsome head, and her great eyes glowed and flashed.  Raymond looked at her with a beating heart, feeling once more that mysterious kindling of the soul which he could not understand, and yet of which he had been before in the presence of Joan so keenly conscious.  She appeared to him to be far older than himself, though in reality he was a few months the senior; for at eighteen a girl is always older in mind than a boy, and Joan’s superb physique helped to give to her the appearance of a more advanced age than was really hers.  Just then, too, Raymond, though grown to his full height, which was stately enough, was white and thin and enfeebled.  He felt like a mere stripling, and it never occurred to him that the many glances bent upon him by the flashing eyes of the queenly maiden were glances of admiration, interest, and romantic approval.  To her the pale, silent youth, with the saint-like face and the steadfast, luminous eyes, was in truth a very preux chevalier amongst men.  She had seen something too much of those knights of flesh and blood and nothing else, who could fight gallantly and well, but who knew nothing of the deeper and truer chivalry of the days of mythical romance in which her own ardent fancies loved to stray.  Feats of arms she delighted in truly with the bold spirit of her soldier race; but she wanted something more than mere bravery in the field.  It was not physical courage alone that made Sir Galahad her favourite of all King Arthur’s knights.  Ah no!  There was another quest than that of personal glory which every true knight was bound to seek.  Yet how many of them felt this and understood the truer, deeper meaning of chivalry?  She knew, she felt, that Raymond did; and as she turned her palfrey’s steps homeward when the twilight began to fall that cold December day, it was with her favourite Sir Galahad that her mind was engrossed, and to him she gave a pale, thin face, with firm, sweet lines and deep-set dreamy eyes —­ eyes that looked as though they had never quailed before the face of foe, and which yet saw far into the unseen mysteries of life, and which would keep their sweet steadfastness even to the end.